The Enterprise Soft Spot, er, the Enterprise Email Crisis

Yesterday I spoke to thousands of Cisco’s employees. That itself was a pretty cool experience. In front of me was a live audience along with several video cameras. To my side was one of their telepresence systems. They had people all over the world who I could talk with and ask questions of. You’ve probably seen their latest advertisments. In experience of using one of these systems you forget that the people you are talking with are thousands of miles away. Telepresence systems are helping Cisco become far smaller, intimate, etc. Plus it’s saving them millions in travel costs, several of the executives from Cisco have told me. But I digress.

At one point during the presentation someone asked me what I’d do if I were trying to apply Web 2.0 techniques inside an Enterprise. I answered “every day I’d try to come up with some way to avoid using email.” I almost said it half in jest but was a little surprised when a sizeable cheer came from the audience.

I had hit the Enterprise soft spot, er, the Enterprise Email Crisis (can we have a bailout for our email bankruptcy?).

There is a lot of hatred of email inside Enterprises, I’ve learned. I knew that already, because of my experience working at Microsoft. But since then I forgot that big companies generate far too much wasteful email. We can go into why it’s wasteful later, but since we’re in the middle of the economic crisis, I’ve been trying to find companies that are strong enough to survive any storm.

I am looking for companies that solve REAL pain in enterprises and that deliver real benefits to bottom lines and productivity. It’s going to be those companies that will survive lean times, just like during the last tech downturn it was the new blogging companies that blew away the far more expensive and complicated content management companies.

How about Zoho, Mindtouch, and Socialtext as candidates? Yeah, I know there’s plenty of others, but these three have already told me about real deployments. Zoho just announced a deal with GE. Socialtext, last week, told me about a few deployments that they asked me not to talk about in public. And yesterday Mindtouch’s CEO, Aaron Fulkerson visited me with a list of companies that are using its services, including Intel, Mozilla, U.S. Army, and Microsoft.

Fulkerson is one heck of a committed dude. He has tattooed his company’s logo onto his leg. Now THAT is taking an “I won’t fail no matter what” attitude to the end of the field. You should listen to what he’s seeing in the marketplace and how he’s differentiating himself from bigger competitors. It’s very interesting to me that he sees open source and APIs as being a way to weather the upcoming economic storm. Interesting too that the company is bootstrapped with friends and family money, so they won’t feel the pressure to show short-term value like they would feel if they were VC funded.

1. When I left my job at NEC after working there for a year I left with 1.5 gigs of email. Neither I nor the company had access to that even though there was TONS of valuable data in there for my replacement. Things like shortcuts in SAP to find important inventory data for our group. Or important people at other companies to know. Getting that data into someplace where other employees can get to it is still way too hard, even when I worked at Microsoft with really cool Sharepoint servers all over the place.

2. The “n*n” problem. Let’s say you have to produce a press release that 10 people have to be involved in. Either to help produce it, or approve it. So, you fire up Microsoft Word. Type a while. Save. Then email it to the 10 people. Problem is, what if each of those 10 need to make a change to the document? They open up the document, reply all, and send around their revisions. All of a sudden there are 100 emails in the system and a huge revision problem for someone to solve.

It’ll be interesting to see how these new companies will swoop in and try to close deals over the next year. If they are successful, these will be among the best positioned to lead us out of the economic troubles. If they aren’t, it’ll be interesting to watch what they did wrong and/or whether bigger companies like Microsoft, with its Sharepoint suite, effectively responded to this new market need clearly is unsatisfied so far.

What do you think? Are you seeing the same Enterprise soft spot? Who is best positioned in your mind to solve the email crisis in big companies?

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Published by Robert Scoble

Chief Strategy Officer at Infinite Retina. https://infiniteretina.com
The Spatial Computing (AR/VR/AI) Agency that helps entrepreneurs with their AR/VR projects and companies.
View all posts by Robert Scoble

You could solve the n*n-problem in your example also by using gobby: http://gobby.0x539.de/trac/
The Email would just contain the hint to the document. In many cases you probably won’t need anything as complex as socialtext.

You could solve the n*n-problem in your example also by using gobby: http://gobby.0x539.de/trac/
The Email would just contain the hint to the document. In many cases you probably won’t need anything as complex as socialtext.

Hi Robert! A good friend of mine and fellow colleague at IBM just pointed me to this blog post you have put together and thought I would leave a comment for your readers. First, surprised not to see many more comments on the topic already… Perhaps they will come up later…

Second, I gave up already on corporate e-mail eight and a half months ago and have moved around 85% of my e-mail traffic to various social software tools, i.e. a combination of both internal and external social tools that allow me, and my colleagues, for that matter, to be more productive. Not sure whether you would be interested in the tools suite I use, but just thought I would let you know it *is* possible to have a corporate e-mail free life and still be as ever productive if not more!

I have been documenting my experiences, reactions, lessons learned, tools I am using, etc., except the last couple of weeks, as I have been on vacation & on a couple of business trips, over at my external blog: http://www.elsua.net/?s=giving+up+e-mail and now that I am back I am due to share the next round of weekly reports.

One thing that may be of interest to your readers is the fact that contrary to what most folks think, ever since I have started with this initiative, more and more of the folks I collaborate and exchange knowledge with, i.e. peers, customers and business partners, they are starting to do the same thing I have been doing and the boost in productivity has been tremendous.

Apologies for such a long comment, but thought you would like to have a first hand experience of how someone like me, working for a large corporation like IBM, yes, *that* IBM!, can effectively and efficiently move away from e-mail, use social software in a business contact and still be as ever productive!

Oh, and did I mention that ever since I got started with this eight and a half months ago I have travelled to several parts of the world ever so much more than in the last eleven years I have been with the company? I don’t think it would be the soft spot of the enterprise. I feel more like hitting the nerve and big time!

Hi Robert! A good friend of mine and fellow colleague at IBM just pointed me to this blog post you have put together and thought I would leave a comment for your readers. First, surprised not to see many more comments on the topic already… Perhaps they will come up later…

Second, I gave up already on corporate e-mail eight and a half months ago and have moved around 85% of my e-mail traffic to various social software tools, i.e. a combination of both internal and external social tools that allow me, and my colleagues, for that matter, to be more productive. Not sure whether you would be interested in the tools suite I use, but just thought I would let you know it *is* possible to have a corporate e-mail free life and still be as ever productive if not more!

I have been documenting my experiences, reactions, lessons learned, tools I am using, etc., except the last couple of weeks, as I have been on vacation & on a couple of business trips, over at my external blog: http://www.elsua.net/?s=giving+up+e-mail and now that I am back I am due to share the next round of weekly reports.

One thing that may be of interest to your readers is the fact that contrary to what most folks think, ever since I have started with this initiative, more and more of the folks I collaborate and exchange knowledge with, i.e. peers, customers and business partners, they are starting to do the same thing I have been doing and the boost in productivity has been tremendous.

Apologies for such a long comment, but thought you would like to have a first hand experience of how someone like me, working for a large corporation like IBM, yes, *that* IBM!, can effectively and efficiently move away from e-mail, use social software in a business contact and still be as ever productive!

Oh, and did I mention that ever since I got started with this eight and a half months ago I have travelled to several parts of the world ever so much more than in the last eleven years I have been with the company? I don’t think it would be the soft spot of the enterprise. I feel more like hitting the nerve and big time!

People keep suggesting alternatives such as IM, Facebook, etc… but they all have the same problem: people send tons of unnecessary things just to make noise.

IMHO these other services are even more of an issue. Besides for more things to check, they are also hard to port over. At least an email address can move from one ISP to another (unless you use your ISP’s domain name). Facebook owns your data.

IM’s are even worse… no longer can you que and prioritize to make the most of your time… it’s “instant”. A constant distraction to your workflow and concentration (IMHO the recent study that it improves productivity is BS).

95% of things sent by email pretty much all FYI’s, How To’s, and reference email’s belong on Wiki’s or other intranet products. Email is conversational and private.

New services don’t fix the problem. New people, or retraining people would.

People keep suggesting alternatives such as IM, Facebook, etc… but they all have the same problem: people send tons of unnecessary things just to make noise.

IMHO these other services are even more of an issue. Besides for more things to check, they are also hard to port over. At least an email address can move from one ISP to another (unless you use your ISP’s domain name). Facebook owns your data.

IM’s are even worse… no longer can you que and prioritize to make the most of your time… it’s “instant”. A constant distraction to your workflow and concentration (IMHO the recent study that it improves productivity is BS).

95% of things sent by email pretty much all FYI’s, How To’s, and reference email’s belong on Wiki’s or other intranet products. Email is conversational and private.

New services don’t fix the problem. New people, or retraining people would.

hey robert- we’re focused on “email as a problem” at defrag this year (chris wand from foundry group really brought this to my attention). We’ve got a session entitled “fixing foundational info channels” – which points to folks like ClearContext, Mailana, AideRSS, and Timebridge as companies working in the email/calendaring/rss “fixing” space.

hey robert- we’re focused on “email as a problem” at defrag this year (chris wand from foundry group really brought this to my attention). We’ve got a session entitled “fixing foundational info channels” – which points to folks like ClearContext, Mailana, AideRSS, and Timebridge as companies working in the email/calendaring/rss “fixing” space.

Robert – one thing email does that other apps traditionally haven’t is ensure you’re getting something in front of other people’s eyes. In many apps, it can feel like you put something up on a page, but then you’re not sure anyone will notice.

The problem then becomes that email is the natural app that people turn to, and it gets used for all sorts of things that go beyond simple directed communication.

The new generation of apps are getting better at directing attention to messages and content in which you’re interested. Message/reply notifications, edit notifications, key word RSS, and other attention hooks are addressing the need to ensure that others will see things.

Eventually, email will become a notification service for content and conversations that are saved and searchable. Company information and conversations move out onto wikis, blogs, social bookmarks, microblogging, whatever.

Robert – one thing email does that other apps traditionally haven’t is ensure you’re getting something in front of other people’s eyes. In many apps, it can feel like you put something up on a page, but then you’re not sure anyone will notice.

The problem then becomes that email is the natural app that people turn to, and it gets used for all sorts of things that go beyond simple directed communication.

The new generation of apps are getting better at directing attention to messages and content in which you’re interested. Message/reply notifications, edit notifications, key word RSS, and other attention hooks are addressing the need to ensure that others will see things.

Eventually, email will become a notification service for content and conversations that are saved and searchable. Company information and conversations move out onto wikis, blogs, social bookmarks, microblogging, whatever.

Cisco TelePresence is saving *many* enterprises millions of $ in travel costs, increased productivity with significant contribution to reduction of carbon footprint. As you saw, it is an amazing experience to participate in a Cisco TelePresence conference.

To add to Hutch’s comment, email in the enterprise brings instant gratification to individuals, and the option to put aside until later if one desires. While IT folks hate it, individuals will continue to have a very hard time leaving email behind for other forms of communication. Many corporations have mailing lists that are used to share ideas among a subset or community, solve problems and otherwise notify its members on various topics. There is little incentive today to abandon the inbox for discussion forums, blogs, wiki pages, etc. as the preferred means of communication. Additionally, email will continue to be used to notify people of new events in any social medium, particularly in environments without lifestream events from individuals and groups that can be gleaned from corporate directories, RSS feeds and the like. Your statement to us regarding finding ways of getting away from email was well received, however execution upon this principle from the collective remains a challenge.

One of my questions to you during the conference (unfortunately time became the enemy) is directly related to this – your points and suggestions on promoting enterprise-wide adoption for social and web 2.0 technologies within an enterprise whose main focus will always be customer satisfaction, and little time to jump onboard to explore what all the talk is about. The urge to share knowledge and collaborate with peers, rather than a need for cooperation, is the incentive, of course. Even so, I submit that this is a challenge across many companies. Subject for a future article from you, perhaps?

Cisco TelePresence is saving *many* enterprises millions of $ in travel costs, increased productivity with significant contribution to reduction of carbon footprint. As you saw, it is an amazing experience to participate in a Cisco TelePresence conference.

To add to Hutch’s comment, email in the enterprise brings instant gratification to individuals, and the option to put aside until later if one desires. While IT folks hate it, individuals will continue to have a very hard time leaving email behind for other forms of communication. Many corporations have mailing lists that are used to share ideas among a subset or community, solve problems and otherwise notify its members on various topics. There is little incentive today to abandon the inbox for discussion forums, blogs, wiki pages, etc. as the preferred means of communication. Additionally, email will continue to be used to notify people of new events in any social medium, particularly in environments without lifestream events from individuals and groups that can be gleaned from corporate directories, RSS feeds and the like. Your statement to us regarding finding ways of getting away from email was well received, however execution upon this principle from the collective remains a challenge.

One of my questions to you during the conference (unfortunately time became the enemy) is directly related to this – your points and suggestions on promoting enterprise-wide adoption for social and web 2.0 technologies within an enterprise whose main focus will always be customer satisfaction, and little time to jump onboard to explore what all the talk is about. The urge to share knowledge and collaborate with peers, rather than a need for cooperation, is the incentive, of course. Even so, I submit that this is a challenge across many companies. Subject for a future article from you, perhaps?

In my opinion, the n*n problem isn’t an email problem. It’s a MS Word problem. Without the content being locked up in that document, people could just “reply all” to the most recent email in the chain. There may be n*n copies, but people only see n.

In my opinion, the n*n problem isn’t an email problem. It’s a MS Word problem. Without the content being locked up in that document, people could just “reply all” to the most recent email in the chain. There may be n*n copies, but people only see n.

A big part of the solution is to give the recipients more choice on what (and how) they receive information. The underlying problem is that the Sender can too easily cause work for all those people getting mail.

Taglocity solves this, without getting all your staff to ‘leave email’ for some new medium – that’s just not going to happen overnight..

A big part of the solution is to give the recipients more choice on what (and how) they receive information. The underlying problem is that the Sender can too easily cause work for all those people getting mail.

Taglocity solves this, without getting all your staff to ‘leave email’ for some new medium – that’s just not going to happen overnight..

Robert, have two minutes to watch a video? http://www.clearcontext.com/pro/ – in two minutes the video there shows our latest product that is helping solve the enterprise email crisis at companies around the world ranging from freelancers to huge corporation.

A few important things we tackle are:

1) Automatically get rid of all the clutter in your inbox (notifications, newsletters, irrelevant threads)

2) Convert email from something where you deal with individual messages on a one-by-one basis to something where you look at and deal with whole groups of information related to projects/activities.

3) Intelligently file and organize email for people so past email becomes a usable archive of information.

We have lots of data on how we are saving time and increasing productivity for individuals and organizations, as well as some very cool new products coming up based on the next level of solutions that companies have been asking us for. I’d be very happy to share this info with you.

Robert, have two minutes to watch a video? http://www.clearcontext.com/pro/ – in two minutes the video there shows our latest product that is helping solve the enterprise email crisis at companies around the world ranging from freelancers to huge corporation.

A few important things we tackle are:

1) Automatically get rid of all the clutter in your inbox (notifications, newsletters, irrelevant threads)

2) Convert email from something where you deal with individual messages on a one-by-one basis to something where you look at and deal with whole groups of information related to projects/activities.

3) Intelligently file and organize email for people so past email becomes a usable archive of information.

We have lots of data on how we are saving time and increasing productivity for individuals and organizations, as well as some very cool new products coming up based on the next level of solutions that companies have been asking us for. I’d be very happy to share this info with you.

While BlogTalkRadio (www.blogtalkradio.com) has become known as the Citizen Broadcast Network which enables thousands to broadcast their own online radio show using any type of phone, its the enterprise application which is also very exciting.

In short, our platform enables major companies and organizations to promote their own messages (both live and archived). We simulcast the live broadcasts on our site and theirs and then we automatically archive these conversations.

It’s not easy for anyone to create podcasts, and we have found that IT departments at large enterprises want very little to do with creating, hosting and managing podcasts.

The Department of Defense, Sun Microsystems, Harper Collins, Woman’s Day Magazine, American Petroleum Institute, Golf Magazine and many other large brands use our tools to “become part of the conversation”

While BlogTalkRadio (www.blogtalkradio.com) has become known as the Citizen Broadcast Network which enables thousands to broadcast their own online radio show using any type of phone, its the enterprise application which is also very exciting.

In short, our platform enables major companies and organizations to promote their own messages (both live and archived). We simulcast the live broadcasts on our site and theirs and then we automatically archive these conversations.

It’s not easy for anyone to create podcasts, and we have found that IT departments at large enterprises want very little to do with creating, hosting and managing podcasts.

The Department of Defense, Sun Microsystems, Harper Collins, Woman’s Day Magazine, American Petroleum Institute, Golf Magazine and many other large brands use our tools to “become part of the conversation”

Email overload has certainly become the bane of knowledge workers in any organization, forming one component of the Information Overload problem (the other being Interruptions). Personally I’ve been engaged in trying to tame this problem at Intel and beyond for over a decade; you can see some of what we’ve been doing in my posts at http://blogs.intel.com/it/tags/informationoverload .

If you share my passion to solve this issue, drop me an email (yup!) or check out the Information Overload Research Group we’ve recently launched, http://www.iorgforum.org .

Email overload has certainly become the bane of knowledge workers in any organization, forming one component of the Information Overload problem (the other being Interruptions). Personally I’ve been engaged in trying to tame this problem at Intel and beyond for over a decade; you can see some of what we’ve been doing in my posts at http://blogs.intel.com/it/tags/informationoverload .

If you share my passion to solve this issue, drop me an email (yup!) or check out the Information Overload Research Group we’ve recently launched, http://www.iorgforum.org .

GREAT topic here. I also love that you sort of stumbled upon it when you were in front of thousands of people. I am actually wearing a Mindtouch shirt right now that I got at Blog World. I met the gang there and they have a great thing going.

We are also helping with the email issue. More specifically, we solve the issue that you mention when you left the organization with gigs of emails that were never to be available again. I met you at the speaker’s dinner at Gnomedex and we talked for a while. Good to see that you got down to San Diego to meet with a company down here! Talk to you soon…

GREAT topic here. I also love that you sort of stumbled upon it when you were in front of thousands of people. I am actually wearing a Mindtouch shirt right now that I got at Blog World. I met the gang there and they have a great thing going.

We are also helping with the email issue. More specifically, we solve the issue that you mention when you left the organization with gigs of emails that were never to be available again. I met you at the speaker’s dinner at Gnomedex and we talked for a while. Good to see that you got down to San Diego to meet with a company down here! Talk to you soon…

Email is great for notification, very poor for revision control and long term corporate memory. Kind of like email vs these blogs, come to think of it.

Here’s a thought for the social media world — someone should create a WP plugin that allowed a commenter to ask for more intelligent notification of additional comments on threads to which they have contributed. Perhaps an archive of follow-up comments could be emailed, with a periodicity set by the commenter (send me an archive once an hour, once a day, etc).

Email is great for notification, very poor for revision control and long term corporate memory. Kind of like email vs these blogs, come to think of it.

Here’s a thought for the social media world — someone should create a WP plugin that allowed a commenter to ask for more intelligent notification of additional comments on threads to which they have contributed. Perhaps an archive of follow-up comments could be emailed, with a periodicity set by the commenter (send me an archive once an hour, once a day, etc).

First in a Windows-only workplace you will never wean users off of what they are used to and they will just continue using Outlook.

Second Microsoft will eventually want to either goble up this company, or one like it, and the rest will be screwed. that is unless they roll their own in which case they will all be screwed.

For small businesses, and home users, what’s wrong with Google Docs to solve this?

I’m fairly sure that for really large companies Google will provide a solution too eventually, but whether it’s Google or somebody else half the benefit will be making it OS independent. Apple, Linux, Windows, smartphone, it should still be able to work at least to some degree.

First in a Windows-only workplace you will never wean users off of what they are used to and they will just continue using Outlook.

Second Microsoft will eventually want to either goble up this company, or one like it, and the rest will be screwed. that is unless they roll their own in which case they will all be screwed.

For small businesses, and home users, what’s wrong with Google Docs to solve this?

I’m fairly sure that for really large companies Google will provide a solution too eventually, but whether it’s Google or somebody else half the benefit will be making it OS independent. Apple, Linux, Windows, smartphone, it should still be able to work at least to some degree.

RE tattooing Longo on head it’s when you get promoted to First Prime and have to have the gold version 🙂 now that’s serious

Back to the main point “Its the people stupid” to borrow a line from Bill Clinton.

And you can use ms word in a collaborative way though any document that has 10 people working on it at the same time is a doomed project..

And tele presence well Cisco will say that (they flog the kit) and for certain classes of meeting they can be very useful but nothing beats the mark1 eyeball and these high end systems the ones the solve the eyeline problem and not cheap and require dedicated rooms.

RE tattooing Longo on head it’s when you get promoted to First Prime and have to have the gold version 🙂 now that’s serious

Back to the main point “Its the people stupid” to borrow a line from Bill Clinton.

And you can use ms word in a collaborative way though any document that has 10 people working on it at the same time is a doomed project..

And tele presence well Cisco will say that (they flog the kit) and for certain classes of meeting they can be very useful but nothing beats the mark1 eyeball and these high end systems the ones the solve the eyeline problem and not cheap and require dedicated rooms.

My first post to your thought provoking site after many weeks of reading. I thought it was time to offer an opinion, which is simply this…

There are two elements which will always pull against each other when it comes to email – technology and cultural response. There have already been dozens if not hundreds of email ‘solutions’ on the marketplace – many of them brilliant at promoting collaboration and knowledge management both inside and outside of the firewall… Even Outlook has had the option to automatically reduce the size of the 10MB photo of the office party to something sensible for 7 years. Who ever uses it or even knows it exists?

Reducing email overload and increasing workplace productivity for me is all about the end-user than the technology. Technology is ‘easy’ – it’s people who are hard. The conferencing companies have a similar problme – they may sell a solution, but spend months training and persuading end-users to use what’s been sold or they won’t reap the revenue.

This exact topic has been dear to my heart of late. There’s a 7 minute video you can see on the trial of http://increasingworkplaceproductivity.the845club.com which gives a dozen tips on how to get better at ‘doing’ email. I’m told people change their habits after seeing it…

My first post to your thought provoking site after many weeks of reading. I thought it was time to offer an opinion, which is simply this…

There are two elements which will always pull against each other when it comes to email – technology and cultural response. There have already been dozens if not hundreds of email ‘solutions’ on the marketplace – many of them brilliant at promoting collaboration and knowledge management both inside and outside of the firewall… Even Outlook has had the option to automatically reduce the size of the 10MB photo of the office party to something sensible for 7 years. Who ever uses it or even knows it exists?

Reducing email overload and increasing workplace productivity for me is all about the end-user than the technology. Technology is ‘easy’ – it’s people who are hard. The conferencing companies have a similar problme – they may sell a solution, but spend months training and persuading end-users to use what’s been sold or they won’t reap the revenue.

This exact topic has been dear to my heart of late. There’s a 7 minute video you can see on the trial of http://increasingworkplaceproductivity.the845club.com which gives a dozen tips on how to get better at ‘doing’ email. I’m told people change their habits after seeing it…

The Mumford Company arranged sale of the 49-room Super 8 of Little Rock on behalf of Little Rock, LLC and SAI Lodging. The $1.65-million http://www.geonlineservice.com transaction was facilitated by Lance Potter of Mumford's Chicago office and Mike Francis of its Dallas office. SAI Lodging plans to upgrade the property and convert it to a Comfort Inn.

The Mumford Company arranged sale of the 49-room Super 8 of Little Rock on behalf of Little Rock, LLC and SAI Lodging. The $1.65-million http://www.geonlineservice.com transaction was facilitated by Lance Potter of Mumford's Chicago office and Mike Francis of its Dallas office. SAI Lodging plans to upgrade the property and convert it to a Comfort Inn.